Today I Prepare

Summering towards
seated moments
found without splinter
found with or without care.
No audience save the
critical unbecoming self.
Were it a long race
to now,
surprised to be amongst
the last running
with a chance to go
to the target beyond end,
tanks full with cupped felt.
So this is the deal.
This is the living life I’ve dealt myself.
Quite past wonderful,
the peaceful purpose
of this old broken down ranch,
these dusty aromatic canyons,
these patient horses,
those skinned over paints.
The big things to come
are all in the building
and the buildings.
There is in the oldest parts of my self
a fear of in-completion,
a fragile marker
in comic fellowship
with arrival.
Yesterday’s “always”.
The stretched and bent note
deep deep within
a return to first
working love.
The three geldings
each a different voice
plucked with dusty steps
those strings my hands chorded
towards tenuous melody,
dirt stirring.
Last night’s thunderstorm
was a lovely perfection
of angry sky,
sharp crackles of light,
wind rushing to get elsewhere,
and wet rain.
All of it laid
over the pulverized dustiness
of our bone-dry desert.
This morning
the shaded moistened sky
is uncertain
of its course for the day.
How is it
that being inside this weather
I find myself
refreshed and hopeful?
Wandering through corners
of the woods
on the ranch
yesterday,
I felt both enchanted
and grateful
as if it were the first time
and not the thousandth.
I also noticed
there were no accusations
by the place
of me.
It was as if
I just might be
the best person
to be here.
The morning light
after a storm
enhanced the interior qualities
of each piece of the forest.
The pines and junipers
seemed to be
holding hands
with heads bowed.
Too short
and appropriately sweet,
I had found
an encampment
for my soul,
a reason to be,
within and without,
embraced and embracing,
excruciatingly temporary.
Sometimes I mistake
the urge to write
for the need to read.
No reading will satisfy
at those times
but recording my own words
always does,
even when the writing
is dull
and pointless.
It isn’t writing actually,
it’s the process.
The reaching inside
and finding a string
which when pulled
causes
marbles
to tumble from the sack.
Today I prepare
to mow hay
with Matt, Rex, Bob and Granite.
The mowing is the thing.
The hay is but an afterword.
The time with the horses
is most important for me.
The grooming of the field
is most valued by the ranch.
If it results in any winter feed,
it is a bonus.

from

“The Other Day”

by Lynn Miller